Employment Rights Act 2025: only the beginning?
For many employers and HR teams, the passing of the Employment Rights Act 2025 may have felt like reaching the end of a very long period of uncertainty.
In reality, it increasingly looks like it was only the end of the beginning.
The Government has made clear that its Make Work Pay programme will continue to be implemented in phases, supported by further consultation with employers, workers and trade unions. Recent weeks have demonstrated just how much remains on the table for potential change and reform.
One of the most significant new consultations concerns employment status – an area employers have grappled with for years. The Government is considering reforms including placing less emphasis on personal service when deciding whether someone is a worker, a possible presumption of worker status, strengthened enforcement and additional protections for genuinely self-employed individuals.
These proposals could have significant consequences for organisations using contractors, freelancers, casual workers and other flexible arrangements. Employment status determines access to some of our most fundamental employment rights, so even relatively technical changes to the tests could materially alter an organisation’s workforce liabilities.
Alongside this comes a substantial consultation on whistleblowing. The Government is examining how the existing framework operates and what reforms might be required. Perhaps most strikingly, it is also considering a Serious Fraud Office scheme under which individuals reporting economic crime could receive financial rewards.
And these are not isolated examples. Further consultations continue across areas including dismissal and re-engagement, equal pay and other aspects of the Make Work Pay programme.
For HR, the message is therefore fairly clear: there is unlikely to be a point in the immediate future when employment law simply “settles down”.
The challenge will be to avoid treating each new announcement as a standalone change. HR teams should instead be looking at workforce models, policies, contracts and processes with sufficient flexibility to accommodate an evolving regulatory environment.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 may have answered some questions. The Government’s continuing appetite for consultation suggests plenty more are still to come.
